December2, 2016

Washington, D.C. – House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-WA) made the following statement on passage of the FY 2017 NDAA conference report:

“This bill makes a valuable contribution to our country’s national security. While it does not contain everything we could have hoped for, the bill includes a number of positive improvements to U.S. defense policy. It wisely avoids earlier efforts to discriminate against LGBT individuals, erode the Endangered Species Act, undermine labor laws, and much besides. Instead, it focuses on efforts to advance the defense of the United States, and I believe it succeeds in doing so.”